Reformers Kick Out Communists

Party Banned From Army, Kgb, Media

August 24, 1991|By Vincent J. Schodolski, Chicago Tribune.

MOSCOW — The Communist Party, which dictated almost every aspect of life in the USSR since Lenin and his Bolshevik followers grabbed power in 1917, came under assault across the nation Friday as angry reformers moved swiftly to break its grip.

In the wake of this week`s failed coup, pro-democracy forces seized the levers of power in republics across the Soviet Union, banning the party`s operations, sealing its offices and closing down its vital publications, including Pravda.

Party cells were outlawed in the armed forces and the KGB. Top figures in the party`s hierarchy quit. Lithuanian officials called for a Nuremburg-style trial for Communists.

Party headquarters in Leningrad-the Smolny Palace, from which Vladimir Lenin directed crucial hours of the Bolshevik Revolution-was methodically sealed, room by room.

In part, the moves were an effort to determine what role party officials played in the attempt to topple President Mikhail Gorbachev, who is also the head of the party.

But reformers also took advantage of the plunge in party popularity-after its failure to move forcefully against coup plotters-to do what they had been trying to do for the last six years: strip the party of its massive assets.

As the institutions of the party crumbled, the pro-democracy reformers had no alternative political organization to replace it. Reformers have spent the last six years under Gorbachev quarreling among themselves over power.

Government bureaucrats, a class similar to civil servents in the U.S., will continue to man government offices and provide day-to-day services. Their bosses will change, though, as Gorbachev, Russian President Boris Yeltsin and other reform leaders fill government posts with those who opposed the coup.

During its years in power the Communist Party has acquired vast amounts of property, real estate, publishing houses and cash, and used all of them to perpetuate its power.

The most dramatic moves against the party came in Moscow where Yeltsin signed a decree banning Communist operations in the Russian republic until a complete investigation of the coup was finished.

Yeltsin, who quit the party last year by dramatically storming out of a meeting of its leadership, closed down the party in Russia with similar theatrics when Gorbachev showed up at the Russian legislature to thank Yeltsin and others for opposing the coup.

``On a lighter note,`` Yeltsin said to deputies of the parliament as a stunned Gorbachev looked on, ``shall we now sign a decree suspending the activity of the Russian Communist Party?``

With deputies clapping rhythmically to indicate their approval, Yeltsin signed the document with a flourish and then tossed it across the desk in Gorbachev`s direction.

Gorbachev, who was grilled by Russian parliamentarians about the role of the party in the coup and confronted with demands for the party to be stripped of its assets, has defended the institution and said he still believes it can be reformed.

Yeltsin also issued a decree temporarily banning the publication of seven conservative newspapers, four of them party organs. The decree said they were being closed because of the role they played during the coup by reporting only news controlled by the junta that seized power.

He also dismissed the directors of the official Soviet news agency Tass and the government`s propaganda arm, the Novosti Press Agency.

It was not clear if Yeltsin had the authority to close the papers and dismiss the officials, but with his power in the ascendancy his orders were not challenged by Gorbachev.

In Moscow the reformist City Council shut the national headquarters of the Soviet Communist Party and placed police guards on all doors to prevent party officials from entering, or leaving the building.

The doors were barred with boards and a huge sign hung outside the main door saying, ``building sealed.``

``Have they arrested the party leaders yet?`` asked one man as he approached the police officer at the main entrance. When the officer responded that they had not, the man frowned and turned away. ``Too bad,`` he said.

Closing the nerve center of the party cut off officials from extensive files on party activities and finances that reformist officials hoped would hold clues to its involvement in the coup.

The Soviet Ministry of Justice Friday demanded that the party`s deputy leader, Vladimir Ivashko, provide investigators with details of all of the party`s activities during the five days between the earliest hours of the coup and its collapse.

In the Baltic republics of Latvia and Lithuania, independent nations until they were forced into the Soviet Union during World War II, the move against Communists was swift and tough.

In both republics the party`s activities were outlawed, its headquarters occupied by police and investigations launched against leading party officials. Reports said Latvian Communist Party leader Alfred Rubiks was arrested for supporting the coup.